The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

In his speech at Bar-Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat center on Sunday, Benjamin Netanyahu the politician disappeared, and in his stead Netanyahu the statesman came to the podium; Netanyahu the leader, who stands in front of his nation and the world to speak the truth, his and ours, like a prophet or a preacher at the gates.

He did not attempt to emulate the United States’ President by spreading false hopes of an agreement with the Iranians, but gave a harsh, biting speech that would have made Barack Obama squirm in his chair. Netanyahu did not overlook the Iranian problem, but took hold with both hands and presented it to the world in all its naked, painful truth. Netanyahu opted to risk his relationship with Obama in order to tell the world: Beware the machinations of the Iranians.

Netanyahu spoke specifically about the evidence for the existence of a military nuclear program -- including both centrifuges and a plutonium reactor-- in his best effort the throw a wrench into the negotiations with Iran. With such evidence made public, no negotiations could demand less than what Netanyahu demanded in his speech, or so he hopes.

With regards to the Palestinian, we again saw the proud Jew, who against all opponents unequivocally demands the existence of the Jewish people in their land: You must recognize Israel as the Jewish state with a right to its country. If you do not recognize it you will not have peace. This is a legitimate demand, important, honest, and truthful, but the Arabs will never agree to it for several reasons.

1. Muslims believe that the religion of Judaism was cancelled out when Christianity arose, and the same happened to Christianity when Islam arrived. And if Judaism is null and void, then how can the Jews come and say that they have a holy land all for themselves?

2. For the Arabs, the Jews are not a nation but a religious community assembled from various ethnicities and countries where Jews have lived for hundreds of years. So if they are not a nation why do they need Israel?

3. According to the Quran, the land of Israel is an Islamic holy land, therefore no Muslim authority will recognize a Jewish state in Israel.

4. Jerusalem is the eye of the storm: According to Islam, there cannot be Jewish sovereignty in Jerusalem, because such an event would signify that Judaism has risen from the grave after Islam had abolished it.

All these reasons prevent an Islamic recognition of Israel as a Jewish state from ever taking place. By insisting on recognition and stalling negotiations in a single spot, Netanyahu has succeeded in delaying the rise of a Palestinian state via an agreement with Israel for several years.

Without a doubt, this was the heart of Netanyahu’s speech, a speech which positions him as a leader and a statesman with a worldview suited to the Middle East, one that both our friends and enemies can value and cherish. To give up on one’s rights is contemptible, while to insist on them is honorable. Netanyahu, and us along with him, stands worthy of respect in the Middle East, and his opinion and positions must be considered.

Dr. Mordechai Kedar(Mordechai.Kedar@biu.ac.il) is an Israeli scholar of Arabic and Islam, a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University and the director of the Center for the Study of the Middle East and Islam (under formation), Bar Ilan University, Israel. He specializes in Islamic ideology and movements, the political discourse of Arab countries, the Arabic mass media, and the Syrian domestic arena.

Source: The article is published in the framework of the Center for the Study of the Middle East and Islam (under formation), Bar Ilan University, Israel. Also published in Makor Rishon, a Hebrew weekly newspaper.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the author.

Source: http://www.i24news.tv/en/opinion/8171-131007-analysis-speech-of-his-life-and-oursCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Say hello again to two of the
most over-promoted and sinister figures involved with the current U.S.
government: Mohamed Elibiary and Dalia Mogahed. If you were one of those
Christian Copts standing in the ruins of your village or church, what
message would you take from all this?

Imagine that in recent weeks alone, dozens of Muslims around the
world had been murdered by Christian extremists armed with suicide belts
and similar paraphernalia.

Imagine that at the same time, around other parts of the world,
Christian mobs had set fire to, and burned to the ground, the holy
places of some of the oldest and most established Muslim communities in
the world.

Do you think there would be a reaction to such events? Probably yes.

Would that reaction be wholly negative and unceasing in its condemnation? Probably yes.

Would it be remotely conceivable that a senior U.S. government
official or advisor would have used the opportunity to claim that
Muslims who had been targeted had brought it upon themselves? Probably
no.

Welcome then to the mirror-image of the real-world persecution of Christians that is going on across the globe today.

And say hello again to two of the most appallingly over-promoted and
sinister figures involved with the current U.S. government: Mohamed
Elibiary and Dalia Mogahed.

Of course, you may not want to: as the terror goes on worldwide, and
the situation around the globe slips continuously in the Islamists'
general direction, there is a growing and terrific ennui among much of
the West. Among much of the Western world, terrorists' marauding is
another case of, "Oh, just that Islamism again." You say a person is not
good? Well, we can't be bothered to find out. The very condition that
so few people can raise themselves to be bothered is part of the
problem: "The trouble with all the nice people I knew in Germany," the
British author Stephen Spender wrote in his Berlin diary in the 1930s,
"is that they were either tired or weak."

Thankfully there are a number of people who can still rouse
themselves to point out how outrageous Western governments' hiring
policies are these days -- as when Mohamed Elibiary was promoted
to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Advisory Council. Yet
despite these heroic individuals pointing out Elibiary's track record of
support for Islamists worldwide, the appointment held -- and so it was
that the U.S. government welcomed another fox into its chicken coop.

Now an American official can not only fail to stand by America's
friends – he can actually blame them for the persecution they are
suffering.

Over recent days, one of the effects of this has already been felt:
in September, when violence against Egypt's Copts had reached another
peak, the new Department of Homeland Security Homeland Security Advisor,
Elibiary, used his twitter account to blame American Coptic activists
for the murder of their co-religionists by Muslim Brotherhood extremists
of the type Elibiary has a track record of supporting.

On September 15, he wrote, "For decade since 9/11 attack extremist
American Coptic activists have nurtured anti Islam and anti Muslim
sentiments among AM RT wing." A day earlier, Elibiary blamed American
Copts for protesting against attacks on their relatives in Egypt, and
recommended an article "on need to reform #Coptic activism in #US
including stop promoting #Islamophobia."

So while Copts were actually being targeted and killed in Egypt, Mr.
Elbiary chose to try to switch attention onto the fictional persecution
of Muslims in the U.S. There is nothing quite like someone excusing one
crime-in-progress by citing a non-existent other crime -- except for, of
course, a U.S. government official doing the same.

Unfortunately, thanks to our enthusiastic, politically-correct
attitudes and radical Islamist ideologies, Elibiary is not alone in the
U.S. administration.

It was Dalia Mogahed, you will recall, who helped President Obama
draft the 2009 Cairo Speech -- a "reset" speech, regarded as seminal
across several rooms in the White House. It was Mogahed who helped draft
the address which apologized for America's past actions while giving
the benefit of the doubt to most of its self-stated enemies.

Dalia Mogahed, advisor to the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Mogahed is not only one of the geniuses credited with that speech;
her record also includes other glowing occasions. Such as the time, that
same year, in which she cropped up on a U.K. television program, which
aired on the most notorious satellite Islamist channel. Mogahed took
part in a discussion about the empowerment of women through Sharia. She
participated, seemingly happily, in the program hosted -- and introduced
as such -- by a member of the radical Islamist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir.
Mogahed also seemed unfazed when, for instance, passionate fellow
participants called for the restoration of the Caliphate (a key
pipedream of Hizb-ut-Tahrir).

Incidents like that have been used against her. But these things have
a tendency to come and go. A little flare-up of bad publicity here, the
rebuttal of legitimate concerns and an accusation of "Islamophobia"
there -- it is all part of the mood-music.

Dalia Mogahed's latest popping-up however, makes all her previous ones not only explicable but mild:

After 80 Coptic churches had been burned down by Brotherhood
supporters, Ms. Mogahed decided to single out for criticism not the
perpetrators but --- the Egyptian media! "The Egyptian media took
advantage of the Copts to achieve many personal/political gains which
has angered the West," she wrote on one of the Facebook pages to which
she spends her time contributing: "Egyptian Americans for Democracy and
Human Rights." All of which adds up to one of the strangest sets of
messages any American government has surely ever given out.

If you were one of those Christian Copts standing in the ruins of
your village or church, what message would you take from all this? If
the officials of the current U.S. administration are managing to blame
the media, or even fellow Copts in the U.S., for your slaughter and the
desecration of your churches, would it be any surprise if they took the
message that the current U.S. administration is not just indifferent to
the suffering of Christians across the Middle East and the rest of the
world, but actively asking them, "Would you mind dying quietly, please?'

The
difference between ordinary people and Western leaders is that while
the former are wary of con men, the latter seem to seek them and need
them. As State Department official Wendy Sherman said last week,
“We know that deception is part of the [Iranians’] DNA.” It seems all
the more reason for Western leaders to hurry to Geneva for the October
15-16 nuclear talks with Iranian representatives.

Chamberlain was eager to be conned by Hitler, paving the way to 60
million dead in World War II. In the early 1990s the Israeli left
anointed Yasser Arafat as Israel’s peace partner even though not a
single Arab leader would have believed a word out of his mouth.
Israel then lived with Arafat’s terror right up to his death over a
decade later.

The North Korean case was highlighted in Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech to the UN
last week. North Korea, he noted, detonated its first nuclear device in
2006—a year after “agreeing” to give up all its nuclear activities. It
remains a dangerous nuclear power to this day.

What U.S. and European leaders seek from con men is the message that
there is no such thing as implacable, ideological hostility and never a
need for military operations or even credible threats of them. There are
no enemies out there, just grievances that can be satisfied. Everyone
is ultimately reasonable and shares Western values, and the easy,
luxurious life of Western elites can go on unruffled.

On Wednesday the Wall Street Journalreported
that Iran was preparing proposals for the mid-October talks. They are
said to include ceasing uranium enrichment to the 20% level, allowing
“more intrusive” international inspections of its nuclear sites, and
possibly closing down its underground enrichment site near Qom—in return
for the easing of Western sanctions.

Israeli intelligence minister Yuval Steinitz called
the proposals “a joke.” He pointed out that “closing the Qom facility
means Iran will be able to produce five instead of six nuclear bombs in
the first year, and giving up enrichment at 20% is less meaningful now
that Iran has 20,000 centrifuges.”

In other words, even if Iran really did give up 20% enrichment, it
now has such numerous (and such advanced) centrifuges that it could
quickly and clandestinely convert part of its 3%-enriched stock to
bomb-grade material.

And yet Western voices are already starting to sing in harmony with the seductive song. The Wall Street Journal
article quotes a “former Western diplomat who has discussed the
incentives with senior Iranian diplomats in recent weeks,” and who says
“The Iranians are preparing to go to Geneva with a serious package.”

The Journal notes that:

By falling short of a complete shutdown of enrichment,
the anticipated Iranian offer could divide the U.S. from its closest
Middle East allies, particularly Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United
Arab Emirates, who have cautioned the White House against moving too
quickly to improve ties with Tehran.

The momentum, however, may once again be on the appeasers’ side. AP already reported this week on a possible thaw in British-Iranian relations, with Foreign Secretary William Hague telling the House of Commons:

It is clear that the new president and ministers in
Iran are presenting themselves and their country in a much more positive
way than in the recent past. There is no doubt that the tone of the
meetings with them is different.

Hague added:

We must not forget for one moment that as things stand
today Iran remains in defiance of six UN Security Council
resolutions…and is installing more centrifuges in its nuclear
facilities. In the absence of change to these policies we will continue
to maintain strong sanctions.

But with an opportunity to be conned beckoning, can prudence prevail over recklessness?That will be the question as the P5 + 1 countries and Iran convene in
Geneva on Tuesday. Sunni Arab states—which are themselves part of the
conning culture and can’t be conned by Iran—and Israel—which has existed
in the region long enough to shed Western illusions—will be watching.
It is hard to be optimistic.

P. David Hornik Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/davidhornik/iran-getting-set-to-con-the-west/Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Egypt lashes out at the US administration for halting military hardware and cash assistance deliveries in a signal of concern over the country's democratic transition

US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki (Photo: AP)

Egypt Thursday condemned a decision by the United States to suspend deliveries of major arms and cash assistance to the Egyptian government, despite assertions of continuing support for interim authorities.

Washington said on Wednesday that it had halted deliveries of large-scale military systems, as well as $260 million in cash aid to the Egyptian military, amid concerns over the country's democratic transition and mounting violence following the ouster of Islamist leader Mohamed Morsi.

The US review was launched in August after a security crackdown on Islamists left hundreds of people dead. The freeze, which the state department said was not meant to be permenant, would remain in effect "pending credible progress toward an inclusive, democratically-elected civilian government through free and fair elections," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement.

The US is halting the shipments of Apache helicopters, missiles, fighter jets and tank parts, officials said.

Egypt's Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman lashed out at the move, despite it being "temporary and entailing no cut or reduction of aid," and "was accompanied by US assertions of keeping up support for Egypt's transitional government."

"The decision was wrong in terms of content and time. It raises serious questions about US readiness to provide stable strategic support to Egyptian security progammes amid threats and terrorism challenges it has been facing," spokesman Badr Abdel Atty said in a statement Thursday.

Abdel Atty, who said Egypt is keen on maintaining good relations with the US, asserted that his country will manage its own security needs.

"Egypt will take domestic decisions independently and without external influences and will work towards securing its vital needs ... namely those related to its national security."

The decision to freeze major military hardware deliveries was marked in a Wednesday call between US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Egypt's military chief, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi.

The United States, however, will keep up assistance to counter terrorism activities, "to help secure Egypt's borders" and bolster "counterterrorism and proliferation, and ensure security in the Sinai," Psaki said.

Egypt has been fighting a growing militant insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula since the army ousted Morsi 3 July following mammoth protests against his rule. The surge in militant activity in the region has raised international concerns, as it adjoins major US ally Israel, and strands the Suez Canal, a vital global waterway between Asia and Europe.

The State Department also said it would continue its support for health programmes, education and private sector development, as well as some aspects of military equipment as well as military training and education.

Washington has trodden carefully on the matter of Morsi's removal, shying away from calling it a "coup." But the US administration has repeatedly condemned growing violence following his removal and a deadly crackdown on his supporters.

Egypt has been engulfed in violent turmoil that has killed over 1,000 since 3 July. In renewed bloodshed, some 57 people, mostly Morsi-loyalists, were killed Sunday as they clashed with security forces and opposing civilians.

Even with limits, Iran would still be able to
make bombs, says strategic affairs minister • Defense Minister Moshe
Ya'alon meets with U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and says: We
cannot fall into the trap of lifting sanctions as trust-building steps.

Will Iran shut down its
Fordo enrichment facility?

|

Photo credit: AP

Officials in Jerusalem on Wednesday rejected
Iran's proposal to halt uranium enrichment to 20 percent, with one
official from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office saying, "No
deal is better than a bad deal."

According to the official, the Iranians are
offering to give up something which does not hurt their enrichment
activities and could still bring them to being a nuclear threshold
state, and no one should be tempted to accept the offer.

"Closing the Fordo compound means that Iran,
in its first year of going nuclear, would be able to make five instead
of six atomic bombs," he said. "Capping enrichment at 20 percent is less
significant now that Iran has 20,000 centrifuges. Israel is ready for a
real, serious diplomatic solution, meaning an Iranian nuclear program
that operates similarly to Canada and Mexico's nuclear infrastructure:
Iran could generate electricity at its reactor, but would need to
purchase the nuclear fuel to operate it from other countries."

The Wall Street Journal broke the details of
the Iranian proposal on Tuesday. According to the report, the proposal
would include limiting the number of centrifuges operating on Iran's
soil as well as a vow not to enrich uranium beyond 20 percent fissile
purity -- a level that international powers consider dangerously close
to weapons-grade.

Iran is also reportedly planning to propose
opening its nuclear facilities to inspectors for international
supervision rather than limiting international access, as it has done
until now. Tehran is still deliberating whether or not to agree to the
Western, and namely Israeli, demand to decommission its enrichment
facility at Fordo.

A Western diplomat told The Wall Street
Journal that "the Iranians are preparing to go to Geneva with a serious
package ... These include limits on the numbers of centrifuges
operating, enrichment amounts and the need for verification." The Geneva
talks are scheduled to be held Oct. 15-16, and will be the first talks
with Iran since the election of Iranian President Hasan Rouhani.

French and British diplomats arrived in Israel
on Wednesday to discuss relaxing sanctions on Iran. Israeli
representatives emphasized that scaling back sanctions would harm
negotiations with Iran and would not achieve their goal. A senior
official in the Prime Minister's Office said that Britain had updated
Israel on "its intentions to thaw relations with Iran, to show it that
dialogue is the right way." Israel maintained that there were still no
European plans to lift the sanctions and that many efforts were made to
prevent that.

Meanwhile, at a meeting at the Pentagon on
Wednesday, Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon told U.S. Defense Secretary
Chuck Hagel not to give up on the Iranian sanctions.

"Any relaxing of sanctions will bring about
the collapse [of the sanctions policy]. We cannot fall into this trap of
lifting sanctions as trust-building steps before achieving any of the
goals set before the Iranians," Ya'alon said.

Hagel reassured Ya'alon that the U.S. was "not
planning to change its unequivocal policy of preventing Iran from
attaining nuclear weapons." During their talks, Hagel expressed his
approval of the U.N.'s undertaking to dismantle Syria's chemical
weapons. Ya'alon and Hagel also spoke about the U.S.'s efforts to
improve the IDF's qualitative advantage.

Wednesday's meeting was the third of its kind in the
past six months. Ya'alon thanked Hagel for his cooperation, and
surprised him with a birthday gift for his 67th birthday last week.

The
slaughter perpetrated by members of the al-Shabaab terrorist
organization in the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi left approximately
67 innocent people dead. While the ramifications of this incident are
still being investigated, the crisis generated by a small unit of a
radical Islamist militia is in itself instrumental in highlighting the
psychology of those who may be considered as apocalyptic hostage takers.

The Dubrovka Theater in late October 2002, a public school in Beslan
in September 2004 or the Westgate Mall in September 2013 are all
tragedies that led to the same conclusions. While Chechens holding
spectators hostage in an Opera House, Arab foreign fighters massacring
children in their classrooms and Africans killing shoppers in the middle
of a random day may have nothing directly linking them, their modus
operandi and especially the psychology behind their actions establish a
direct bridge between those diverse groups of Islamic terrorists.

The concept of apocalyptic hostage takers may be defined by three key
aspects intrinsic to the crises mentioned above. The first and most
straight-forward point is the choice of targets that, in this case,
represent the terrorists’ will to destroy the key to intellectual and
social life of a world they do not understand and cannot integrate into.
The second aspect stemming from the choice of targets is the need to
destroy life in its most natural form. For this, Islamist hostage takers
do not simply torture and kill but also express no willingness to live.
The last notion central to this idea of apocalyptic hostage taking is
that Islamist terrorists see the process of leading dozens of innocent
people to death as an irrational spiritual experience linking the group
of self-proclaimed righteous to the early followers of the Muslim
prophet Mohamed.

The first step necessary for understanding the nihilistic and
apocalyptic vision of the world present in the hostage takers’ minds is
the analysis of the objectives chosen by the Islamist terrorists for
their attacks. In the fall of 2002, approximately 50 armed elements of
the Riyad As Salahideen took control of the Moscow Dubrovka theater. The
hostage taking of hundreds of innocent spectators during a
representation of the Nord-Ost opera underlines an essential element
revealing the disregard Islamist terrorists have for culture and arts.
In an end of the world mentality built upon a dogmatic understanding of a
totalitarian ideology, opera houses are part of a freedom of mind that
cannot be tolerated. While adults are not supposed to indulge themselves
in the pleasures of music and dance, children are not free to study and
learn. The massacre in Beslan was the outstanding proof that, pushed by
their irrational understanding of life, militiamen are unable to grasp
the sanctity of a school and its classrooms. In the apocalyptic state of
mind no one is out of reach from the wrath of God, a wrath meant to
destroy every aspect of individual freedom and brought forward by men
and women armed with automatic weapons and strapped with explosive
vests. The Westgate mall is the latest example pointing in that
direction. Al-Shabaab militiamen did not only target civilians, they
perpetrated an attack on an infrastructure constituting an utter
blasphemy in their corrupted mindset. Leisure and self-appreciation
found in shopping are elements highly incompatible with the
ultra-conservative understanding of Islam espoused by these terrorist
groups.

The second element essential to the Moscow, the Beslan and the
Nairobi hostage taking crisis is the absolute will to destroy life.
Hostage taking incidents led by radical Islamists differ from any other
event of this kind as they are based on abuse of the victims, an
apocalyptic discourse and utterly unattainable objectives. The overall
irrationality of the goals stated by terrorists, may it be the
independence of Chechnya or the supposed act of war against Kenyan
policies, underlines the inexistence of a clear strategy pursued by the
perpetrators. Neither al-Shabaab operatives nor Arabs and Chechens wish
to obtain a clear strategic victory out of these hostage takings. In
addition, the assailants clearly express their will to die. Their
discourse, their attire and their tactics set them at the margins of the
society they intend to demolish. For this, the arbitrary execution of
innocent spectators and the gruesome torture of random shoppers is only
part of the hostage takers’ macabre walk toward a certain death. Since
the victims do not and objectively cannot enter the exclusive spiritual
circle of the terrorists, any act of brutality is apparently justified
to destroy the social fabric of the radical Islamists’ perceived
enemies.

The psychology of apocalyptic hostage takers may better be understood
by linking it to the modern intellectual fathers of radical Islam:
Sayyid Qutb and Ayman Al Zawhiri. These two Egyptians have contributed
in developing the concept of a Muslim vanguard using physical and
aggressive Jihad to lead fellow coreligionists toward the real meaning
of Allah’s precepts. In this vision, all those who are not part of the
vanguard movement are to be considered legitimate targets whose death
would serve the goal of cleansing the world’s sins. In this theory, the
amount of dead cannot be limited and the final objective cannot truly be
quantified leading it to be an irrational way of preaching the
apocalypse. Both Al Qutb and Al Zawahiri have developed their theories
by building on the much fantasized experience of early Muslims, the
Muhajireen, who performed hijra from Mecca to Medina with Mohammed.
Detached from its motherland, the community is meant to fight for a
sacred cause and rely solely on its members.

The utter detachment from any temporal and earthly reality along with
the unwillingness to set clear and attainable goals are the key
elements setting radical Islamist hostage takers at the margin of a
society they do not want to be part of. Since, in their understanding,
only the destruction of human life can bring out the truth of the
Quran’s teachings, their resulting apocalyptic views are key to
understand and counter the tactics used in Moscow, Beslan and Nairobi.
Shall other incidents of this kind occur, no negotiations, no
socio-political understanding and no indirect support should be allowed
as all of it reinforces those who disregard the core of human life. In
fact, only the direct destruction of these nuclei of irrational killers
may save the lives of innocent men and women.Riccardo Dugulin holds a master's degree from the Paris School of
International Affairs (Sciences Po) and is specialized in International
Security.Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/riccardo-dugulin/the-psychology-of-apocalyptic-hostage-takers/Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Humans
succeed in the administration of a society only when there are
neutrally applied rules to protect its citizens, the rules are followed,
and rule-breakers are punished. Society can only function to the
benefit of its members when the actions of those members are governed,
even if involuntarily, by a spirit of objective justice. We were blessed
at the inception of our country with brilliant men and women, on the
verge of creating a country in which they could have given themselves
vast power, instead whose principles guided their hands. They influenced
and wrote the most balanced, ordered blueprint for a civil society the
world has ever known.

That
system has been eroded over the last century by the inexplicable
attraction of socialism to those too narcissistic to allow others to
freely prosper, though it was not until the administration of our
current chief executive that we understood the determination of the left
to fully destabilize the country by attacking its fundamental order.
That is where fundamental transformation actually happens. When the
moral framework of a nation is purposefully assaulted to the benefit of
the attackers, the survival of the ordered society is threatened. What
we see as the near daily occurrence of political affronts to our
traditions and history is intended both to overwhelm us, making it
nearly impossible to respond to so many affronts at once, and distract
from the eventual result. It is a constant war of manufactured crises
waged against the founding principles of our society by those who seek
to destroy and replace them.

Before
the ascendency of the left in the last half century, hundreds of years
of trial and error, guided by both malice and charity, gave us a society
continually striving for equality and fairness in treatment under the
law. Given the innumerable variables in human nature, any other form of
equality or fairness is not attainable. Free will has always been the
wild card. Before now, the freedom to exercise one's will was considered
a basic American right, so long as it was not exercised to purposefully
or carelessly do harm to others. If applied in good conscience, the
Constitution and those laws devised through an ordered legislative
process were the ultimate bulwark against the malicious indulgences of
human nature and free will.

An
entitlement culture will, sooner or later, breed parasitic members
whose mere existence is considered by them so meaningful that it is
deserving of the reward of other peoples' property. Indeed, one of the
foremost tools in the left's war on America is the redefinition of
historically applied and understood principles, particularly equality
and fairness. Everything that has been done in the last 50 years by the
left, and particularly in the last 4, has been falsely done under the
dual banners of equality and fairness.

"Equality",
in the economic sense, has been warped by the shiftless, envious, and
greedy to become a unilaterally determined entitlement to what others
have paid for with time, labor, risk, and determination, absent any
contribution from the claimant. As applied to rights, "equality" means
the entitlement to preferential treatment over fellow citizens who have
done no wrong. "Fairness" has simply come to mean the right to extort or
steal to achieve the new equality.

These
irrational conversions, focusing exclusively on grievance rather than
merit, are promoted in the mental fever-swamp of the left's cultivated
victims as the alternative to actually curing their own inadequacies.
This is the bread and butter of community organizers. Victims suffer due
to others, never due to their own qualities or choices. They suffer
from the right of others to exercise free will, not due to the exercise
of their own.

Acting
on the premise that transformation is required to restore equality and
fairness, as reinvented by the left, there is no moral structure,
framework or institution of an ordered society that is not thereafter a
justifiable target. The laws and traditions that previously kept people
morally ordered are targeted for destruction by the left. The left
cannot advance where there remains moral order; leftism and moral order
are mutually exclusive. Like other cults of power, leftism must destroy
traditional morality in order to replace it with the apparent wisdom of
the ruling elite. When leftists act, therefore, they do so in purposeful
violation of the established order, both structural and personal. They
refuse to adhere to the rules they swore to uphold, and conduct
themselves in ways clearly apart from the established moral order. They
both subvert and overwhelm the system, knowing it is not equipped to
respond to perpetual immorality.

The president came to power
professing his belief in the restoration of equality and fairness,
knowing full well that neither were fundamentally missing from our
society, and that in truth he would seek neither. Aware that his enemy,
decent Americans, would not define those terms as leftists do, he
understood that his false invocation of those principles would provide
cover, at least for a period of time, for actions designed to strike at
the foundations of the country, weakening and collapsing it.

The
administration of this president, and the legislative malfeasance of
his party, have been a ceaseless attack on the order of our society,
aided by a media that sees in Democrats the heralds of forced conversion
to a uniformly anti-American worldview. Reason, the objective check on
illogic and evil, has been relegated to a bygone era by the president's
servants, a quaint but undesirable remnant of a free America. The
president shares nothing with us of our traditions, our beliefs, our
history, or our morality. Even if an American by birth, he is not an
American by experience. What he believes of this country was implanted
by those bent on disordering it, and then destroying it. Thus, claims to
equality and fairness are nothing more than disingenuous appeals to
moral people, while acting to defeat them.

In
this latest foray into malicious infliction of harm on Americans, the
government shutdown, those who have yet to see the light may finally
glimpse the mindset of this country's most determined destroyers. Of
course, one must have slept through the early stages of the Sequester
not to have begun to see it then, even if one ignored the countless
legal and moral indignities imposed on the country in the preceding
three years. Tours of the White House, belonging to the public, were
stopped on the basis of funding, though there was enough money to send
the president's daughters on vacation to the beaches of the Caribbean
and the slopes of Colorado in the same week. Public services were cut,
but there was enough money to fly the president's dog to Martha's
Vineyard on its own plane. There has always been money for golf, and
entertainment, and vacations, and the luxuries due a monarch.

Until
now, with open air parks, private sites, and shrines to American
Exceptionalism being needlessly barricaded, no American president has
acted so overtly to punish Americans for the impertinence of seeking
order. No prior president has acted to deprive them of the exercise of
the benefits of citizenship for which they have paid dearly to a
government designed to serve the country rather than own it. To inflict
this level of harm, he has angrily rejected all appeals to order and
structure. To the credit of the Republicans, they, at least, have
employed the mechanisms of the system. They have invoked rules and
tradition to seek an orderly resolution of political differences.

This
president and his party, however, will have none of that. If this
current impasse is to be resolved, it will only be through pain and the
surrender of those few politicians left who are finally defending the
American people, the target of the president's loathing. Only when those
remaining radicals, the advocates of Constitutional order, are defeated
will the way be clear for the new America. This president has made
unmistakably clear that he will not compromise with those who seek or
promote order over chaos. Either he "wins" and the country is
irreparably damaged, or.... nothing. Either way, ordered solutions are
unwelcome as the demands of "terrorists" and "hostage takers".

Without
rules, there is no order. Without order, there is chaos and crisis.
When there is chaos, there is opportunity to direct newly-disordered
people into whatever the controlling forces desire. Until now, our laws
have served to limit the historic inclination of emotionally and
intellectually malformed citizens to enslave others whom they perceive
as vulnerable to an assault by government. In our Constitutional
history, nothing is more disordered than an American president who daily
promotes chaos in open warfare against his own country's founding
principles.

Homefront Defense Minister Gilad Erdan cites
"constant contact" between Israel and Egypt following U.S. announcement
it plans to scale back military aid to Egypt • Senior Israeli official
quoted as saying U.S. decision could have "dismal consequences."

"I hope this decision will
not have an effect," Homefront Defense Minister Gilad Erdan

|

Photo credit: Uri Lenz

Israel "believes and hopes" that the U.S.
decision to cut aid to Egypt will not affect the two countries' historic
peace deal, Homefront Defense Minister Gilad Erdan said Thursday.

Speaking to Army Radio, Erdan said Israel and
Egypt have maintained close ties and that there was cooperation and
"constant contact" between the two countries.

"I hope this decision by the United States
will not have an effect and won't be interpreted as something that
should have an effect," said Erdan.

Unlike Erdan, other officials in Israel, as
well as other regional players, voiced real concern over the U.S.
decision. The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Israel and
other U.S. allies, namely Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates, were frustrated with "what they describe as America's
unwillingness to assert itself in the volatile region."

The report came on the heels of the U.S. State
Department announcement Wednesday that the country would withhold
deliveries of tanks, fighter aircraft, helicopters and missiles as well
as $260 million in cash aid from Egypt's military-backed government
pending progress on democracy and human rights.

The decision demonstrates U.S. unhappiness
with Egypt's path since its army on July 3 ousted President Mohammed
Morsi, who emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood to become Egypt's first
democratically elected leader last year.

But the State Department said Wednesday it
would not cut off all aid and would continue military support for
counterterrorism, counter-proliferation and security in the Sinai
Peninsula, which borders U.S. ally Israel.

Meanwhile, a suicide
bomber drove his explosives-laden car on Thursday into a checkpoint
outside a coastal city in Sinai and detonated it, killing three soldiers
and a policeman, according to security officials.

The attack outside el-Arish also wounded five people,
said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with
regulations.

The bomber, they said, slowly approached the checkpoint,
waited for soldiers and policemen to start searching the car before he
blew himself and the vehicle up.

The State Department also said it would
continue to provide funding that benefits the Egyptian people in such
areas as education, health and the development of the private sector.

According to The Wall Street Journal, however,
a high-ranking Israeli official said that cutting aid "can have dismal
consequences, way beyond Egypt. It's a sign to the whole Middle East
that America is stepping back and is not interested anymore. It's going
to affect America's position from Morocco to Saudi Arabia."

The split decision to cut aid illustrates the
U.S. dilemma in Egypt: a desire to promote democracy and human rights
along with a need to cooperate with a nation of strategic importance
because of its control of the Suez Canal, its 1979 peace treaty with
Israel and its status as the most populous nation in the Arab world.

"We will … continue to hold the delivery of
certain large-scale military systems and cash assistance to the
government pending credible progress toward an inclusive, democratically
elected civilian government through free and fair elections," State
Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement.

The military-backed authorities have cracked
down hard on the Muslim Brotherhood since ousting Morsi. On Aug. 14,
security forces smashed two pro-Morsi sit-ins in Cairo, with hundreds of
deaths, and then declared a state of emergency and imposed a curfew.
Many of the Brotherhood's leaders have been arrested since.

In the latest violence, protesters clashed with security forces on Sunday, with state media reporting 57 people dead.

Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East
program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank
in Washington, said it was doubtful Washington would gain any leverage
over Cairo by withholding the aid.

"It may make some Americans feel better about
the U.S. role in the world, but it's hard to imagine how it changes how
the Egyptian government behaves," he said.

Some lawmakers criticized the administration's decision.

"The administration is trying to have it both
ways, by suspending some aid but continuing other aid. ... The message
is muddled," said Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat who chairs
the Senate Appropriations Committee panel that funds such aid.

"Pulling away now may undermine the ability of
the United States to work with a critical partner," said Representative
Kay Granger, the Texas Republican who chairs the House Appropriations
Committee's panel on foreign assistance.

The U.S. position also exposed differences
with its key Gulf ally Saudi Arabia, which welcomed Morsi's ouster and
has promised extensive financial support to Egypt's new government.

As if to underscore the divide, the Saudi
Embassy in Washington released a statement noting that Saudi King
Abdullah had met Egyptian interim President Adly Mansour in Jeddah.

"We will support Egypt against terrorism,
sedition, and those who try to undermine its security," King Abdullah
said during the meeting, according to the statement.

On Sept. 24, U.S. President Barack Obama said
Washington would keep working with the interim authorities in Cairo, but
faulted them for anti-democratic moves such as the emergency law and
restrictions on opposition parties, the media and civil society.

Speaking to reporters in a conference call,
U.S. officials said the U.S. would withhold deliveries of M1A1 Abrams
tank kits made by General Dynamics, F-16 aircraft produced by Lockheed
Martin, and Apache helicopters and Harpoon missiles built by Boeing.

The material withheld was worth hundreds of
millions of dollars, the officials said, but stressed that its
suspension was not meant to be permanent and would be reviewed
periodically along with Egypt's progress on human rights and democracy.

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel called
Egyptian Defense Minister Col. Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to tell him
about the U.S. decisions, speaking for about 40 minutes in what one U.S.
official described as a friendly conversation.

Hagel stressed the relationship's importance but underscored the U.S. view that Egypt must move toward democracy.

Officials at Lockheed Martin, Boeing and
General Dynamics declined to comment, referring queries to the U.S.
government or military offices handling the weapons sales.

For decades, Egypt has been among the largest
recipients of U.S. military and economic aid because of its 1979 peace
treaty with U.S. ally Israel, which agreed as a result of the pact to
withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula it seized from Egypt in 1967.

The U.S. has long provided Egypt with about $1.55 billion in annual aid, including $1.3 billion for the military.